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This chapter provides a profile of returning prisoners and presents data on the demographic and crime profiles of returning prisoners. It discusses race and gender, literacy and education, physical and mental illness, marital and parenting relationships, and substance abuse. Ex-prisoners are still mostly male, minority, and unskilled—yet in each of these areas, there are trends that signal significant changes. Today's inmate is likely to have been in custody several times before, has a lengthy history of alcohol and drug abuse, is more likely to be involved in gang activities and drug dealing, has probably experienced significant periods of unemployment and homelessness, and may have a physical or mental disability. Most of them have young children, with whom they hope to reunite after release, although in most cases, their children will have infrequently visited them during their incarceration.

This chapter addresses the relationship between crime and lack of entrepreneurial opportunities by examining the connection between self-admitted drug dealing and labor force behavior. It uses prison data from California, Michigan, and Texas to provide a basis for examining the characteristics of self-described drug dealers. Quantitative measures of criminal preferences and motivations for engaging crime are used to assess their impacts on both employment and crime.

Drug offences give rise to arguments for greater police powers and resources, alteration of police ethics (because of the use of agents provocateurs and various surveillance techniques) and greater internationalisation of criminal law. In seeking descriptions of what actually is wrong with any particular offence, and how to make differentiations in gravity between differing ways of committing it, one place to start is with the cases on sentencing. The leading ‘guideline’ case on sentencing for drugs offences is Aramah, in which the judgment discloses three major reasons for criminalisation: profits, consequential crime (both by users and distributors), and harm to the user. Any satisfactory explanation of what is wrong with drug dealing must account for legal regulation of tobacco and alcohol. This chapter seeks to identify the wrong in drug dealing by drawing attention to certain analytical similarities with blackmail. It also examines drug dealing as a form of exploitation and the reasons for decriminalisation of drug dealing.

While chapter 4 sought to explore organisational and structural properties, chapter 5 sought to provide a generic and largely descriptive account of gang activities sin relation to level of gang organisation. Chapter 6 looks to build upon structure and activity by specifically focusing upon one, and the main, type of activity in which gangs are found to operate within. This is illegal drug supply. By doing so chapter 6 adds the relevance of context to the book discussion. The chapter opens by re-examining the supply of illegal drugs into the British Isles, and more specifically the research context (i.e. Scotland). The chapter then proceeds to outline how drug supply works in relation to context and specific level of gang organisation. YSGs are found to mainly be engaged in the social supply of drugs. YCGs are found to be involved anywhere between retail-level and wholesale drug supply. OCGs are found to be involved in importation and high-end wholesaling of drugs in the county. In addition, OCGs are also found to engage in illegal-governance and thus control to varying degrees the activities of lesser gang types within drug markets.

This chapter describes the specific drug market in which the young men participated and the business model they employed (the structure and hierarchy of the market, the partnerships they formed, ethnic aspects, substances, purchase, delivery, storing, turfs, snitching, etc.). In many ways, the young men largely conformed to the descriptions of drug markets and drug dealers that exist in the scholarly literature on these topics; however, their particular cultural background differentiated them from other drug dealers in significant ways. At the same time, they created a business model based on the experiences of the older generation and placed specific emphasis on not letting themselves “get carried away.”

Leaning on Mary Douglas’ concepts of purity and impurity and Max Weber’s concept of irrationalities, this chapter examines how the actors in markets do not always have utilitarian reasons for their actions but are often driven by less rational forces. The young men placed a strong emphasis on their distinct notions of purity and impurity, which were influenced by their cultural and religious ideas and their concept of honor; these notions influenced their behavior within the drug market, including their choices of substances to sell, business partners, and customers, and the degree of violence in which they were willing to engage.

This chapter looks at how The Boys would go about their drug dealing. Selling drugs was a risky business, so in order to evade detection from the police, The Boys had to be discreet. Drug dealing also involved shrewdness, the activity in many ways being similar to running a business. This meant buying drugs as cheaply as possible and then trying to sell them on to make maximum profit. The Boys consumed drugs, but what they used themselves differed from what they sold. Many of the young men also drank alcohol, with some of them drinking heavily and often. The chapter examines the challenges that drinking alcohol presented in a neighbourhood where most of the residents were Muslims.

This chapter presents the life stories of three drug dealers – Daniel, Usman, and Hassan – who represent three different groups of dealers. It notes that the concept of ‘street capital’ helps one to understand these marginalised men's different trajectories to street drug dealing. The chapter also presents Mette, the only female dealer interviewed. It notes that Daniel and his friends were the youngest group interviewed, and that most of them came from dysfunctional families and were drawn to The River by a sense of adventure. The chapter describes how Usman was part of an older group of dealers initiated into serious crime at an early age. It further describes Hassan's life story. Hassan belonged to a third group of dealers, which consisted of refugees who had all come to Norway in the relatively recent past and did not speak Norwegian well.

The use of the concept of terrorism in Colombia, especially regarding who is a terrorist, has changed through the years according to the discourse, making it difficult to understand the phenomenon as a single one. Understanding terrorism, and the responses that the Colombian state has created to address it, requires identifying how specific agents have been categorized as terrorists according to the context. This chapter argues that instead of being an objective and continuous reality through the history of Colombia’s conflicts, terrorism has appeared as a result of the construction of discourses that have positioned specific agents as terror organizations. This categorization is not a simple matter of semantics; it has brought relevant policy implications related to the forms in which the state has responded to violent actors.

This chapter considers how street capital is maintained which is done by being tested by Olders. This testing allows members to transition from the expressive to the instrumental repertoire. Examples of robbery are given as illustrative of the instrumental repertoire. Drug dealing is also addressed as an example of maximising street capital. Gang members also play to win in the social field through the use of video and social networking sites. Group violence and gang inclusions are also reviewed as opportunities for maximising street capital.

This chapter identifies how experiences at school, in the job market, with racism, and as refugees are important to understanding why the young men ended up dealing drugs at The River. In addition, it shows how many of them developed strong subcultural identities over time. The chapter notes that as ‘foreigners’, the young men capitalised on a kind of ‘otherness’, and from a subordinate position they developed counter-strategies. It explains that these strategies built self-confidence and ethnic pride, which, however, also reinforced processes of marginalisation.